By Tracy Ouellette
SLN Staff
The East Troy Community School District Board of Education has two open seats on Tuesday’s ballot and newcomers – Bob Dignan and M-Jai Harrell – are running along with board President Ted Zess.
Dignan said he decided to run this time around because there was an open seat with the retirement of School Board Vice-President Dawn Buchholtz.
“I had been approached a couple of different times by different people back when they had an appointment to fill, but I didn’t have the time to devote to the job at that time,” Dignan said. “Now, for the first time in my life, I have more flexibility in my schedule and can do this.”
Harrell said it was her passion for East Troy and education that led her to run.
“I am raising two 10-year-olds in East Troy and they are in the School District,” Harrell said. “I’m pretty passionate about this town and the youth here.”
For Zess, running again came down wanting to finish what he started.
“I think I’m to the point where I want to see a lot of the things we started come to fruition and we have a pretty young board right now and I think the board needs some continuity.”
Falling short
The hot-button topic for the School Board, district and residents is, as with most schools in the state, the lack of adequate funding.
With the East Troy School District facing a nearly $500,000 projected budget deficit including a 16 percent increase in health insurance costs, for the 2019-20 school year and continued budget shortfalls projected, the School Board is looking into a possible operational referendum in April 2020.
The board commissioned an ad hoc committee to look into the operational referendum question and come back with a recommendation this fall.
“It’s a tough one,” Zess said. “I see both sides of it. I see where there’s not much choice with state funding anymore. But then we have to look at how much, is it recurring, and if so, the length, or non-recurring and I don’t have the answers for that and that’s why I think the ad hoc committee is so important.”
Zess added that he understood people’s concerns about higher taxes, but he thought some of that might be shortsightedness.
“OK, you can’t pay anymore taxes, I get that, but if the School District fails, your property taxes suffer in the long run,” Zess said. “The state has put us in the position where we have to spend more than we have to educate the youth. People don’t realize if we dissolve the district, taxes aren’t going to go down, they’re probably up, you’ll just be paying it to another community.”
Dignan said he didn’t have a problem with an operational referendum, but thought there was an underlying problem with the funding that East Troy could work on.
“I think the bigger issues than the referendum is the recurrent budget deficit and being a community of our size were plagued by enrollment issues, the real issue is how do we fix that? A referendum is one way, but it’s not the only way.”
Dignan added that he would have liked the referendum question to have gone to the voters in Tuesday’s election.
“But that’s easy to say from the cheap seats and I don’t fault the board for the decision to wait, they have more information than I do,” Dignan said. “I don’t think there is an easy solution and we need to make the public aware of just how much is at stake here.”
Harrell said she supported the referendum, while acknowledging that it was a difficult choice to ask taxpayers to pony up more money.
“I think spending money on our youth is an important investment,” Harrell said. “However there are ways to be conservative and think outside the box, opportunities to be had and things we haven’t tried before.”
Harrell said she thought some fresh perspective on the board might be a way to find some of those opportunities.
“Because it’s a worthy cause but how can we do it without running our town into a hole, the ideas are there, but fresh perspectives to add on to new ideas or a push to make things happen might be just what we need,” Harrell said.
For the full story, pick up a copy of this week’s East Troy Times/News.
